Something Amazing

Google buys Motorola Mobility

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:00:00 +0800

This just happened. 12.5 Billion dollars apparently.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html

Motorola make shit Android software.

Google make awesome Android software.

Motorola have hardware capability.

Google have no hardware capability.

Winner!

Edit: Also bolsters Google’s patent portfolio. See the recent post on the official blog.

Xperia PLAYers Contest Wrapup

Sun, 08 May 2011 18:58:16 +0800

So we’ve reached the end of the 3-week period for the Xperia Players competition. All-in-all it’s been a fun ride. Big thanks to Dan S (for good laughs for forgetting to attach the competitions) and Daniel Y (for emailing me said attachments when Dan S forgets!) for throwing the whole contest together, to Sony Ericsson for allowing this to happen, to Optus for sponsoring the contest with a SIM with preloaded value, to my twitter followers who retweeted all my posts (and facebook friends that shared them) and of course to my fellow contestants!

For anybody that’s been reading, the Play is a great handset - the user interface is fluid, phone build solid and the control pad is in more or less words - ‘awesome’. Think of the PLAY handset itself as a PSP running Android, with the capabilities of a smartphone, and the added benefit of being able to download games on demand! If you are a heavy gamer and looking for a new smartphone, you’ve really got no excuse not to purchase one!

I’ve compiled a little index-listing of all challenge entries below, for your viewing pleasure. Thanks for reading!

Challenge #1 (Video Game Character Lookalikes): http://reecewagner.com/post/4923366896/xperia-players-competition-1-video-game-character

Challenge #2 (Photos of everyday life): http://reecewagner.com/post/5263193966/xperia-players-challenge-2

Challenge #3 (App Review): http://reecewagner.com/post/5266005739/xperia-players-challenge-3

Challenge #4 (Capture reactions): http://reecewagner.com/post/5131764624/xperia-players-challenge-4-capture-and-share

Challenge #5 (Let’s Golf 2 character): http://reecewagner.com/post/5063443773/xperia-players-challenge-5

Challenge #6: [incomplete]

Challenge #7 (Mr Xperia): http://reecewagner.com/post/5264328139/xperia-players-mr-xperia-challenge

Challenge #8: [incomplete]

Challenge #9 (Inserting Android Mascot into interesting photos): http://reecewagner.com/post/5265093641/xperia-players-challenge-9

Challenge #10: http://reecewagner.com/post/5300772232/xperia-players-challenge-10

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #3

Sat, 07 May 2011 13:51:48 +0800

Challenge 3 of the contest is to demonstrate how my favorite app makes my life more easier or fun. I’ve chosen to Google Latitude as my app to review, which is essentially a live location-tracking service for Google maps. Many of my cohorts opted to make a video describing their app, but I thought a video wouldn’t be the best platform to get the word across.

Latitude looks like this:

The icon at the bottom of the screen is me, and the other icons are where my friends are at. Latitude comes included with all Android handsets, and can also be downloaded for BlackBerry OS, iPhone, Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile. Here’s some uses I have concocted for Google Latitude!

Catching your partner cheating

Suspect your partner is cheating on you? No problem! No need to hire a private investigator and pay hundreds of dollars an hour, just buy her a new Android handset outright, help her “set it up”, add yourself to her Latitude account and off you go! Real-time tracking! So when she’s staying back for work and you see that she’s actually 30km away at 28 Shifty Drive, grab your baseball bat/gun and go for a drive. You’ll have the satisfaction of bursting in on her, clubbing the other man in the face, and you’ll be saving hundreds of dollars in private investigator fees!

Tracking Pizza Delivery

Okay, this one isn’t realistic, but I did actually use it for this purpose once. I was over a mates house and waiting for his housemate (my friend too) to bring home the motherload of pizza from his shift at Domino’s. We were a little drunk and a lot hungry, and anxious to know when he’d arrive. Then I remembered I had him on latitude! So I opened latitude up and we tracked his progress, all the way up the freeway to the apartment doorstep. Maybe Dominos should look into using the Latitude API to further improve their online pizza-tracking experience?

Locating friends out and about

Newer versions of Latitude contain a “real-time updating” feature that allow you to tap on their icon to get near real-time indications of where they are at. Normally, there will be several minutes between your Latitude updates (depending on your use of the phone, settings enabled, etc), enabling this option will make it near-instant. So if you’re out and about, have agreed to meet up with Johnny X and have no idea you actually are, just hit him up on Latitude!

Better yet, you can scope out Latitude to see which of your friends are out and about on the night!

Locating Osama Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden recently made the mistake of accepting unitedstatesmilitary@gmail.com to his Latitude friends list. Even the world’s hide and seek champion makes mistakes every now and again..

Overall I think Latitude is a really cool concept; as more and more people start getting Android phones, the ubiquity of the application should increase. There’s great opportunity to do real-cool things with something like this, and Google has made an API interface available to the public to program with, so there’s a good chance somebody is going to make something very, very cool and exciting out of this. If you’ve got an Android handset you can access Latitude very easily by opening Google Maps, pressing the menu key on your handset, and hitting Latitude. Stalking Ahoy!

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #9

Sat, 07 May 2011 13:03:36 +0800

Nearing the end of the competition now! Last submissions are tomorrow night at 11.59PM (is that EST!?). Challenge number 9 entailed placing the Android mascot into into various situations (famous event, landmark, movie, etc) via image editing (or hard copy). Of course given my terrible artistic skills I chose the image editing route. We’ll call the Android mascot Andy for short!

#1 Andy invades a recent important announcement by President Obama

#2 Andy Invades an Apple Keynote!

#3 Who really shot JFK?

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #2

Sat, 07 May 2011 11:42:00 +0800

The description of Challenge #2 - “Capture three or more images with your Xperia PLAY showing your everyday life”. And so I did just that!

#1: Me at work, working hard (obviously!):

#2: Getting ready to go out to dinner!

#3 Me and My friends have a Tuesday weekly LAN sesh. Nerding it up!

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #1

Mon, 02 May 2011 22:46:00 +0800

Challenge #1 in the Xperia PLAYers competition is to find and document 5 people (anybody; people I know; celebrities; you name it) who look like video game characters.

#5) Oprah and Birdo (Super Mario Bros 2)

‘nuff said!

#4) Amy Pond (Doctor Who) and April (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Okay, so this one started as a comic book, but was one of the earliest video games I can remember. As you may remember, April is the redhead friend of the Ninja Turtles. I’ve included the movie depiction of her above; the 8-bit image might not make it so easy!

#3) Hurley (from LOST) and Snorlax:

Okay, this one was taken from Smosh, but it’s absolutely uncanny. As a fan of both series, I couldn’t resist putting this one in!

#2) Jack (from Let’s Golf 2) and Brad Pitt

#1) Mario and Matt

Article number one was a photo taken roughly a year or so ago with a work colleague of mine. Short, Italian and boasting a Mustache, I couldn’t help but cut out a circle from a piece of paper, color in an “M”, stick it on the nearest red hat and take a picture of it!

This picture was the first thing that sprung to mind during the contest; and as such I’ve taken the liberty of photoshopping the picture to match that of a confusing Mario Japanese box cover!

Trivia: The cover is of the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2; which was never initially released in the west because it was deemed too hard for American Audiences. In it’s stead , Nintendo redesigned an existing Japanese game, replacing the in-game characters with characters from the Mario series and leaving the rest of the game intact otherwise; which is why Super Mario Bros 2 bears little resemblance to any other of the early Mario titles. It was later released on SNES included in Super Mario All-Stars as ”Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels”.

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #4: Capture and share three or more...

Mon, 02 May 2011 21:44:00 +0800

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #4: Capture and share three or more real life reactions to your Xperia PLAY.

Android Battery Life: How to extend it

Sun, 01 May 2011 12:22:00 +0800

I get a lot of queries from people about how they can extend or otherwise save battery life on their Android handset. I just thought I’d do a quick write up ways to converse, or otherwise be smart about battery life.

The first thing that people need to get through their head is that this is a smartphone - a multifunctional device that maintains a near-constant connection to the internet. This isn’t your old Nokia 3310 - the days of charging your phone once every 3 days are long gone. It doesn’t matter if you’re using an Android handset, an iPhone or a Windows 7 phone - you simply aren’t going to get the same amount of battery life as a non-smartphone. Now with that out of the way..

There is one widget that all Android phones have access to, that is indispensable for extending battery life. It’s called the Power Control widget. To add this, you need to be on the home screen of your phone. The press the Menu key on your phone, click “Add”, click “Widgets” and then scroll down to Power Control and click on it. It’ll look something like this:

The Icons (from left to right) are as follows: Wireless Network Scan, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync Adapters, Brightness. In a situation where you want to converse as much battery as possible, you’ll want to switch all of these off (and brightness down to low). I’ll just give a little explanation on each of them:

Wireless: This icon is actually for the scanning of wireless networks - your phone will periodically scan the surrounding area to see if there’s any wireless networks around and report it to you. It’s best to turn this off unless you going to connect to a wireless network, or are actively trying to find one to connect to (e.g. strolling through the city).

Bluetooth: Pretty self explanatory, this activates the Bluetooth radio on your phone and scans periodically for other Bluetooth users. This won’t make your phone “discoverable” (this can be done from wireless settings, and is quite an intensive process), but will still consume a small amount of battery. Again, turn it off if you aren’t using bluetooth.

GPS: Having GPS active will give any applications that use your network location access to the GPS. This means you can turn it on but not actually be constantly connected to GPS. Despite this, your phone will likely still check GPS location periodically (especially if you use something like Latitude), so it’s also a good idea to turn this off unless you actually intend on using GPS.

Sync Adapters: This is a big one. It’s also the hardest to explain. When sync adapters are enabled, your phone’s “push” notification will be active. This means your phone will maintain a weak, but constant connection to various servers. Examples of this are your Gmail, Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc (although the last 3 can be disabled easily from inside the application). By disabling sync adapters, you will save a lot of battery life. I’ve estimated in the past nearly double, but it’s probably slightly less than this. Just be aware that you won’t be notified of any new emails, posts, etc. I usually leave this off unless I’m anticipating receiving important email(s) (or just bored and with access to a charger).

Brightness: This one is also pretty substantial. What you set this to really depends on the environment you are using your phone in (e.g. in sunlight vs. indoors, daytime vs. night time), and also how desperate you are to save battery. I know first-hand that having brightness on low makes it nearly impossible to see the screen in some conditions, whereas in other situations it’s completely fine - for example I usually turn it to low at the movies so I can check my phone and not piss people off too much. Some phones will also have an “automatic” brightness setting, that users the phone’s light sensor to detect what level the brightness should be at. It looks like this:

This is a pretty useful setting, so set it to automatic (with the “a”) if you aren’t sure what to set the brightness to.

Background data

This is the hugest one of them all. This will turn your smartphone into a dumbphone, but you should definitely get around twice your normal use with this disabled. Background data deals with your phone’s actual connection to Google’s servers - this includes things like use of Google Talk (chat), access to Android Market. This is essentially an extension of the Sync Adapters talked about above, and disabling background data will also disable sync adapters. I turned this off last night and was surprised to find the battery-near full this morning (after some twitter/facebook/foursquare usage). To disable this, go into Settings > Accounts & sync > and untick “Background data” (pictured below).

Applications that use Background data will generally prompt you to turn it on if you try to use them, so it’s safe to untick this.

(Note: Some of the following may not be an option, or not apply to your phone. It depends on the manufacturer and Android version. The wording may also not be exactly right from manufacturer to manufacturer - use your common sense!).

Live Wallpapers

This one’s a given; if you are using live wallpapers (any sort of interactive, flashy wallpaper on your home screen); it’s going to be using more battery. Switch to a normal wallpaper.

Use only 2G networks

This one can be reached from Settings > Wireless & Network Settings > Mobile Networks > Untick “Use only 2G networks”. This will mean your phone only connects to the slower 2G networks (which usually appear as a “G” icon in your status bar). Again, this depends on how desperate you are.

Data enabled

This is accessible from the same menu as use only 2G networks. This disables all mobile network data. I’ve never actually used this to converse battery, so I can’t comment on how much it saves, but it would be a lot. This is the ultimate way to “dumb” down your smartphone; turning this off will disable anything that uses the internet. A handy use for this is if you are travelling overseas - you better untick the box, or you’ll get hefty roaming charges from your phone using your connection.

And so that’s it. Disable anything you read about in the article that you don’t use, and it should help your battery life substantially. Personally I charge my phone every night and only disable the aforementioned if I know the phone isn’t going to last and I need to use it later, or in more dire situations where i’ll need to use it at the end of the day (e.g. at concerts). It’s really about adapting to your needs at the given time and thinking ahead a little.

Xperia PLAYers Challenge #5

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:08:00 +0800

Challenge 5 of the Xperia Players competition is to get stuck into Let’s Golf 2 by Gameloft, and unlock character costumes and customizations. Gameloft would select the most entertaining character at the end of the challenge period.

So after a lot of playing time, I’ve finally unlocked EVERY costume. Before posting my actual entry to the challenge, I thought I’d pay reps to the actual character costume I’ve been using throughout the entire game (didn’t want to change because I’d already leveled this character up significantly):

Now my actual entry - the most “entertaining” character I could come up with is the final unlockable character - a sort of old golf veteran style dude. I’ve got him wearing a crazy knight-style hat and caesar style robe. To top it off, he’s holding a pink golf club ;)

Xperia PLAYers Competition #1 - Video Game Character Lookalikes

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:05:31 +0800

Couldn’t help but post this one. I think this is one only the PLAYer contestants will get, Jack (one of the unlockable characters) and Brad Pitt. Seems almost to me like they’ve modeled him on Brad Pitt! (Sorry for Blurrycam).

#2) Jack (from Let’s Golf 2) and Brad Pitt

#1) Mario and Matt

Xperia Play - SD card problems & How to fix them!

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:59:00 +0800

So I was having some difficulty with my SD Card on my Play today.

Going from when the phone is powered on, the first thing it will come up with is “SD card safe to remove” in the phone status bar. Naturally this isn’t what is meant to happen when you turn the phone on, so as a work around this I tried to mount the card from Settings > Storage > Mount SD card. After I’ve done this, if I wait for about 10 seconds it’ll come up with the “SD card safe to remove” option again, putting me back at square one.

A quick Google of “xperia play SD card issue” helped me find the answer pretty fast.

The problem? Your back battery cover of your play isn’t on properly! There’s a small white tab/button next to the SD card compartment on the back of the phone, and as such when the cover isn’t _fully_ pushed down, this button is not pressed in. If it’s not pressed in, the phone won’t allow you to mount the SD card properly. Simple as that, just get your cover pushed in! Heres a picture showing the offending white “tab” highlighted in red.

There was quite a few Google search results for this problem, so I thought I’d try and post a bit more of a descriptive explanation of the problem to help others out. I was able to easily replicate the problem by taking the back case of the phone off. Perhaps in a future firmware update a “Back cover loose” message could put placed in the status bar when this happens? :)

Reece

Video

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:42:27 +0800

Let's Golf 2 Review for Xperia Play

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:36:00 +0800

As you may or may not know, for the next 2-and-a-bit weeks I’ll be reviewing the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, as part of a competition: Versus nine others, I have to throw the beat-down in a variety of challenges in order to win the actual unit itself. The latest challenge that has been issued: To play through Let’s Golf 2 by Gameloft. The game reminded me somewhat of a hybrid between Kirby’s Dream Course for Super Nintendo and Snowboard Kids for Nintendo 64. More on that later.

I was hired to kill, but then I fell in love(!)

Now, the story of Let’s Golf 2 and I is kind of like one of those movie plots: One character is ordered to pretend to fall in love with another character by an external third party, as part of a mission of some sort. But slowly, and surely, throughout the course of the movie, they begin to have true and genuine feelings, and eventually do fall in love. In my situation, I’ve been ordered to play through Let’s Golf 2 with the agenda of winning an Xperia Play; but just like my movie analogy, what begun as a simple challenge has blossomed into a true romance!

Yep; I’m gonna go right out and say this is a great game. Not because it’s one of my challenges and it’s sponsored by Gameloft, I had genuine fun playing the game. There’s a few “extra-extraordinary” things that make this special:

- I know nothing about golf.

- I’ve only played golf a few times at school, and I was not a fan of it.

- In the passing moments I’ve seen it on TV, I’ve found it very boring (On the contrary, golf scandals are interesting to follow)

Let’s Golf 2 certainly should have appeal casual gamers; you don’t have to be a golf buff, or even know anything about golf to get into the game. The career mode in the game works like this: you pick a character, you play a course. Each course has several holes. Depending on how you fare in the course, you’ll win a medal; and winning medals unlocks new courses and customizations for your character. The customizations are of particular interest, each character has a variety of clothing sets, hair, golf balls, and golf clubs to unlock. These aren’t merely for aesthetic, each costume grants a different set of a attributes for your character. Did you know having blonde hair increases your accuracy and putting by +5, but reduces your recovery by -2? Neither did I.

Character Skills!

Each playable character also has a skill they can invoke. Skills (more like powers, since most of them are un-natural feats impossible for a normal human to perform) can be invoked when the players power bar is full, which replenishes steadily after each shot. For example, Vincent; the character I’ve been playing has “explosive force”, which allows him to whack the ball up to 120% (as opposed to 100%). There’s been all too many occasions where I was able to use his power to get an Eagle on a course where it would normally be impossible and get in front of my competitors! Other powers include no wind, Retrograde (undo your last swing), Magic call (create a track of fairway grass when swinging from a rough or bunker) and many more.

This game makes me feel like the reward centers in my brain are continually being fired at. Look! New costume! New course! New type of golf ball! Level up! This continual unlocking of content is frankly, what keeps you coming back for more. Gameloft certainly know how to keep their players peeled to the screen!

Noob-friendly!

Another aspect which I believe contributed to the general entertainment of the game, to put plainly, is that it’s very noob friendly. For non-golfers, and non-gamers (I’m a casual gamer, but certainly not a golfer). You don’t *really* have to have knowledge of how to play golf, with each shot you make the game will automatically target the next patch of green where you should be aiming for, pick the best club style, and will even perform a move known as an “auto-put” if you get the ball close enough to the hole, meaning you won’t accidentally screw up that simple shot because your cat decided to jump on your lap just before you take it. These help take the frustrations out on learning players; and frankly I think without it any casual gamers that had little interest in golf would probably put the game down in frustration after a few turns.

Graphics!

The graphics in the game itself are great; more than what you’d expect for a portable/hand-held device. On top of this, there’s lots of little aesthetic pleasers scattered throughout each course; horses, foxes and rabbits running around the course (I think one of these made me get an out of bounds though *shakes fist at horse*), ships sailing in the foreground of oceanside levels; there’s even a course situation on the “Mount Olympus Golf Club” which has floating islands throughout!

Improvements!

It is an overall great game. I was able to think up a few suggestions on how the game can be improved (hello Gameloft, material for Let’s Golf 3?). Firstly; an extension of the character customization feature. Let us completely design our own character as in the traditional character creator found in many games; an then unlock new clothing and equipment from there - similar to how Miis work in the Wii at the moment.

The game lies on the border between realism and unrealism. On the realism side you have a golf game, where you have a club, which you hit the golf ball with, until you get it in the hole. On the side of unrealism, your golf ball lights on red/blue fire if you hit it at the right time, golf courses set on Mount Olympus with floating islands and the characters have (seeming magical) powers. I mentioned at the start of the review that this game reminded me of Kirby’s Dream Course, which is essentially Kirby Golf; albeit in a non-golf and far more whacky setting. Kirby’s Dream Course also contains “powers” that can be collected (as you hit the enemy) and can be invoked at any time while Kirby is in motion. Why not introduce more whacky and unrealistic aspects in a future sequel; even if it’s during later on in the game. Collectable skills/powerups on each course, stages set on the moon/mars in low gravity, objects on the course that teleport the ball, conveyor belts; you name it! Even if this is in the form of a “bonus” hole at the end of each course, I feel this would be a welcome addition. Also - a more RPG-style level up system for characters could be adopted. Instead of each character having one ability, give them a matrix of abilities to choose from and improve, much like the traditional style RPG. This could fit in with the ability to create custom characters, so that you could essentially begin with a clean slate and choose abilities as they level up. Finally, some in-game tips for non-golfers would be appreciated. While I don’t think a tutorial is necessary, an explanation of the golf scoring system would be appreciated in the first few levels (I had to wikipedia this). There’s also a few golf terms which I’ve presumed the meaning of, such as the pitch names, which could be explained. Perhaps the first few levels should have some tool-tips of sorts explaining both the golf terms and game mechanics.

Conclusion!

All in all Gameloft has done an impressive job at creating a game that should appeal to golfers/sports gamers and non-golfers alike. I now know the meanings of terms like Birdie, Bunker, Fairway, and have developed an appreciation for a once-loathed sport!

Speculative, yet interesting stuff.

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:05:00 +0800

Speculative, yet interesting stuff.

Playstation Phone! Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Competition

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:45:00 +0800

Hey guys,

So I’m taking part in a competition. I’ve been sent a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (aka “Playstation Phone”; codename Zeus) which is a hybrid mobile/gaming phone; and for the next 3 weeks I’ve got to review, rate and blog the shit out of this phone. At the end of the 3 weeks, the contestant who does the best job at this, as well as a set of competitions that will be posted, gets to keep their unit.

How can you help? Retweet my tweets; reblog my blogs; “share” the links posted on my Facebook wall to your own and help me spread the word in general! If I win, every person that helped me win the phone will receive a portion of the phone, which I will cut up personally (larger contributions mean you get a bigger piece of the phone).

To “kick things off” I’ve stuck to a tradition held by many tech websites; the video unboxing. This involves the recording of the “opening of the box” and initial start-up of the phone. Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting new blog posts and videos on the phone, so follow me on and tumblr and twitter if you don’t already, and keep your eyes peeled on me on Facebook!

(via @eddie_thoughtS) Sony Ericsson Play Commercial featuring...

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:31:14 +0800

(via @eddie_thoughtS) Sony Ericsson Play Commercial featuring Kristen Schaal (Mel from Flight of the Conchords (aka the crazy chick!)). Interesting ad!

Catchy song! Matt And Kim - Daylight. Was featured on Skins...

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:28:39 +0800

Catchy song! Matt And Kim - Daylight. Was featured on Skins Season 5’s finale “Everyone”

On Android Updates

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:39:00 +0800

I recently applied for a graduate role at Google, and not long after I was emailed by a member of the Engineering Recruitment team with some questions.

One of the questions I launched into an answer at length. I thought it would be a waste to not share it, so here it is!

- What is your favorite Google product? How would you improve that product?

Most certainly Android. I own 4 Android handsets (5th due soon). I feel the upgrade cycle for Android phones can be improved - at the moment it’s up to the handset manufacturer to produce the upgrade and the carrier approve and test the upgrade. I feel that carriers don’t fully understand the importance of software upgrades, not just from a feature perspective, but a security perspective. Too many manufacturers are neglecting upgrading their handsets (especially in smaller markets), which is hurting the consumer.

I’d improve this by launching an multi-focus initiative - carriers and handset manufacturers should know and 100% understand benefits of upgrades, and why they should invest time and money into it. At the same time the upgrade process could be improved - there’s no one true unified process for performing upgrades; each handset manufacturer has their own way. It would be fantastic if a standardized way could be developed. The developing norm for Android seems to be websites which authenticate with the user’s google account to push data to the phone (the new Android Market website, and the upcoming Google Music service), so I see a central hub where users can check for and manage upgrades for their phones to be the best possible solution to this problem.

Many consumers still don’t understand the benefits of upgrading - the fact that they can upgrade their phone, gain new features, faster and improved interfaces, etc. A central website for upgrades and a more streamlined process would help the user realise this. There’s also the issue that updates wipe data (with exceptions, depending on the manufacturer), so a more powerful backup utility would need to be developed to encourage users to update more.

The Android “Platform Versions” page is a good indicator of this: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.htmlHow many of the users using Android 1.5 and 1.6 have updates available to them, but don’t realise or even know how to begin the process? Education needs to be the first step for phone updates; users shouldn’t be saying “my phone keeps running out of memory, I’ve read I need to upgrade to the new version of Android to be able to install apps to SD card”, or “I want to put new music on my phone, but iTunes is telling me to update the phone”; they should be saying “there’s a new update out for my phone - I need to check out the new features and take advantage of the security fixes”!

Upgrading Nexus One (Vodafone) to Gingerbread

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:44:49 +0800

Hi guys,

Here’s the steps I followed to upgrade from my unrooted STOCK Vodafone (AU) firmware to Gingerbread. This is from the latest Vodafone firmware. Disclaimer; if this process bricks your phone it’s not my responsibility. You do so at your own risk (not likely but covering my backside anyway!).

1) You need to downgrade to an older, Google-specific firmware (FRG33). Download this from here

2) Extract it, and you will find another .zip file, rename this to passimg.zip and copy it to the root of your phones SD card.

3) Power down the phone, hold Vol- and turn it on, it will fire up into HBOOT, and detect the passimg file on the SD card. You’ll get a yes/no prompt to install it, so pick yes and let it do it’s thing for a few minutes. All being well (as in it is OK with downgrading) you can then reboot. You are now using the official Google Firmware, rather than the Vodafone firmware.

Next is a long series of steps of upgrading from version to version. Each upgrade (process) is the same as previous one, so repeat steps 1 through to 8.

#TROUBLESHOOTING

- IF you run into any problems, check that you are upgrading from the right version/file (especially if you are getting error 7). If you skip any version or step it will likely produce an error. Check in Settings > About Phone > Build Number if you are unsure of your version.

- Also, make sure if you have extensions hidden in windows that you aren’t renaming each file to update.zip.zip (as it won’t pick up the update.zip if it’s called update.zip.zip).

#NOTES

- When I followed this process, I did not get any Over The Air updates. IF you do happen to get OTA updates, then you might be able to ignore certain steps (depending on what your OTA upgrades to).

== File list (Repeat steps 1 - 8 for each of these)

FRG33 > FRG83

FRG83 > FRG83D

FRG83D > FRG83G

FRG83G > GRI40 (Gingerbread)

== Steps (Repeat once per each file)

1) Place the file on the root of your SD card

2) Rename it to update.zip

3) Power the phone off, hold the trackball button and power on.

4) You’ll be booted into a white screen with three Android robots on skateboards. Select “Bootloader.”

5) On the next screen, select “Recovery.”

6) Your phone will reboot, giving you a picture of the Android robot and an exclamation point inside a triangle. Now press the power button and volume up button at the same time. It could take a couple of tries.

7) Now (using the trackball this time) choose “Apply sdcard:update.zip” and let things run their course.

8) Reboot, then repeat all these steps to upgrade to the new version, until you finally have Gingerbread.

Please let me know if there’s any errors in the above instructions, haven’t exactly got 2 phones to test myself :)

HTC Wildfire Review / First Impressions

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:11:03 +0800

So not too long ago, I won a HTC Wildfire from Telstra’s “Let’s get in shape together” survey. I thought I’d put together a small review with my basic thoughts on the device.

The Wildfire is meant to basically be the budget / “baby” version of the HTC Desire, one of Telstra’s flagship phones.

Initial Impressions:

The screen quality is noticeably worse than my Nexus One, and for the sake of comparison I even got out my old HTC Dream/G1 to compare, and the Dream certainly looks a lot sharper. This is to be expected given it’s a “budget” phone, but worse than my 2 year old phone? The screen is nice and bright though, I actually took it out in the sun with my Nexus One and the screen is a lot easier to see.

The design is nice - it looks fairly sleek, fits snugly in your hand and the buttons are in all the right places.

The touch screen keys actually work quite well. In case you aren’t familiar with them, touch screen keys are keys that sit just underneath where the bottom screen of the phone ends (as if they were almost a part of the screen). They’ve copped a lot of flack for being unresponsive / “difficult” to press on many phones, but this seems to be the exception. They are also significantly further down than most phones, so it looks like they’ve improved the design based on feedback about people hitting the buttons accidentally.

This phone seems to have copped a lot of flack about being slow and unresponsive, but I’ve yet to see this. I’m rather impressed with it’s performance given that it only has a 528Mhz processor.

This is another phone that has pre-loaded Telstra apps which essentially are just icons that launch the browser and take you to the website of said icon. This would be a nice feature for older people that “Google” their way around the internet, but other than that it’s fairly redundant. I also noticed an email from Telstra in the stock email application which seems to indicate that if you pay Telstra a monthly fee, you can access your emails from the phone, which seems like a big ripoff to me.

The phone includes HTC’s own Android Framework, HTC Sense. I really can’t fault Sense at all, it’s a nice and intuitive set of user interfaces; and I certainly wouldn’t be warded off from buying a phone with it included. I did feel the setup sort of “threw” a lot of questions at you all at once; the normal Android setup basically asks for a Google account plus some small things and you are good to go; but the Sense setup asks for a bunch of different accounts - which are optional, but still slow the process down. There’s also a bunch of apps included with Sense which make me kind of say to myself “duh, why aren’t these included with normal android?”. These include SIM Toolkit, a handy beast of an app that allows you to do common-sense things like check your balance of your phone carrier, a PDF Viewer, Quickoffice a flashlight app and more.

I can’t comment on the battery life yet, as the battery came half-charged like most new phones.

The phone also has an optical trackpad, which I seem to have no problems using. To test this out, I composed a few words with deliberate errors and used the optical trackpad to move to the errors and fix them up. Worked a charm & got it on the first try.

The camera is actually quite good, which has surprised me. It’s a 5.0 megapixel camera, which is a curious choice for a budget phone. I would have been happy with 3.0 megapixel, but I’m not complaining! Also, the camera application looks a lot better than the stock android application in my opinion; it uses a bunch of hidden controls by default that are transparent when shown. A most wise design choice, HTC.

While overall I think this is a nice phone, I can’t help but compare it to it’s arch-nemesis, the HTC Legend. If I had to recommend a lower-end smartphone to someone, I’d point them toward the Legend because:

- The phone has a nicer design. It’s quite thin, really light and is sleek to hold.

- The legend doesn’t come with 20 redundant apps that just open up links to the browser.

- It has a marginally faster processor.

I _would_ however recommend the Wildfire to anyone needing NextG coverage or needs to be on a plan with Telstra. That’s my synopsis of the phone, feel free to comment with any questions!